Research English Church Census 2005

The Christian Research group have published the results of their fourth English Church Census. I have integrated these stats into my Statistics of Religion in Britain page, and here is a summary:

Between 1979 and 2005, half of all Christians stopped going to church on a Sunday (6 in 100 of us now do).

Between 1998 and 2005, half a million people stopped going to church on Sunday.[2]

Daily Telegraph's religious affairs correspondent, Jonathan Petre, says "While 1,000 new people are joining a church each week, 2,500 are leaving."[2]

29% of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16% of the population [2]

Nearly all Church 'growth' is due to immigrants. A massive influx of Polish workers have filled churches.

"The fastest rates of decline were among Roman Catholics and Methodists; whereas the Pentecostal Churches showed significant growth over the period. As a result, Methodism has dropped to fourth place behind Pentecostalism. If these rates continue, the C of E will overtake the RC Church within the next four years." [3]

"London has 11 per cent of all churches in England, and 20 per cent of all churchgoers. It has 53 per cent of all English Pentecostalists, and 27 per cent of all Charismatic Evangelicals. Also, it caters for 57 per cent of all worshippers in their 20s. “I couldn’t believe that figure myself, and had to check it again,” said Peter Brierley, the director of Christian Research."

You know, when I enrolled in my school, there was no option for 'agnostic' or 'atheist' in the 'religion' section of any of their forms.Various denominations of Christian, the major other religions (Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and possibly Buddhist, I think), and 'Other religion', but no option for no religion whatsoever. As I recall, they advised anyone who didn't practice a particular religion to put down 'Church of England', since that was the state religion, and hence the default.